Not content with forcing Christians to convert, pay a fine or flee, the zealots of the Islamic State in Iraq have taken to blowing up historic Shiite mosques and shrines, some of them hundreds of years old. For savagery and intolerance, the Islamic State now rivals the Taliban in its heyday.

Remember how the Taliban in 2001 detonated two ancient Buddhas dating back 1,700 years? This desecration was par for the course for the Taliban, which also banned kite flying and a variety of other activities, while imposing a long list of restrictions on women and girls. Its penal code stipulated that if a woman failed to wear a veil in public, “her home will be marked, and her husband punished.”

Such are the prison-like rules that apparently await the residents of Iraq’s new extremist state.